A blog on the borders of the Medical, Chemical and Biological sciences.
The Book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks Picador, 1986 What it’s about: A Summary Welcome to the world of a neurologist. Oliver Sacks compiles many case studies he has published in medical case journals. These serve both as incredibly insightful looks at particular neurological disorders. This is the only one … Read more
The Book The Noonday Demon – An Atlas of Depression Andrew Solomon Scribner, 2003 What it’s about: A Summary First of all, I have to say: the book is LONG. Very long. It took me maybe two months to read, but then I don’t have much time to read in the evenings after work. Despite it’s … Read more
I have absolutely no illusions about this blog, and I am fully aware that the majority of the time I’m talking to myself. So I thought it would be worthwhile starting a new feature where I review books I have read. If you are reading this and have yourself read the book I am reviewing, … Read more
A note from the author: As this is an emotive subject, comments are disabled after 4 days. This is because, at this stage, I feel that ongoing discussions tend to stagnate. As my first post in a very, very long while, I thought I’d post an extended discussion about some aspects of homeopathy. Homeopathy is … Read more
As promised – here is the second post of two to begin my hopefully-more-regular posting of blog posts! As a change of pace from the “Problems in Pharmacology” series of posts, I thought it would be good to provide a solution. Pharmacogenomics is a merging of pharmacology and genetics, wherein genetic information from the patient … Read more
After an extended hiatus, I decided to do two quick posts to sum up some the most contested general issues in current pharmacology. Firstly: data collection and ethics. In order to overcome some of the boundaries faced by the modern doctor, it is essential that they have access to data and private information regarding the … Read more
This week’s post follows on from something I touched on last week: the issues in the drug design process. Drug design tends to be stem either from mimicry of molecules the chemist knows that the drug target already interacts with (such as a substrate that binds to an enzyme) or from knowledge of the potential’s … Read more
I thought a good way to begin this blog was with a series of posts dedicated to defining what exactly pharmacology is, and the inherent difficulties in studying and practicing it. First of all: definitions! Chemistry is the study of the composition, properties and behaviour of matter, whilst biology is the study of life and … Read more
Hello world! This is my first post, so a perfect opportunity to just let you know what to expect from this blog. The reason I decided to ask for a blog here? Why not? It’s a good place to keep my interests in scientific topics other than my Masters project, to record and summarise them. … Read more